It is rare for anyone to say no to Bush these days. It is bigfoot-strolling-down-Orange-Avenue rare for Republicans to do it.

Bush is in for a tough year -- catching heat from many directions.

Many blacks feel betrayed by Bush's One Florida'' plan to end affirmative action. They question Bush's commitment to diversity.

At the same time, longtime Republicans feel betrayed by Bush's efforts at diversity, specifically efforts to recruit more blacks, women and Hispanics to government posts. To do that, Bush must look beyond the ranks of the Republican Party to appoint more minorities and women. That includes appointing Democrats, or at least Democrats who have recently switched parties.

And that means longtime Republicans -- many of them white men -- are getting passed over.

With friends like these, who needs Democrats?

Even Bush supporters who agree with his diversity moves are unhappy. Some argue that committee members are rarely consulted on appointments. When they do get a call from the governor's staff, they say, their advice is ignored.

The people on the executive committee are the foundation upon which the rest of the Republican Party is built. These are the organizers who take the attack plan back to loyal troops in the field.

They suffered for eight years under the Chiles administration, which certainly wasn't running appointments by the Republicans for a quick OK.

Executive committee members say they don't want much. Just that the Republican governor appoint Republicans.

Bush's staff thinks the party activists want more. Bush wants to do more than diversify government. He and his staff want to diversify the party, too, and they're wondering whether executive committee members aren't more interested in maintaining their power.

The executive committee consists of three members from each county; all Republican members of Congress; statewide elected Grand Old Party officials. As the leading Republicans in the Legislature, Senate President Toni Jennings and House Speaker John Thrasher each appoint 10 members.

That's where Bush comes in. Apparently the executive committee membership rules were drawn back when Republicans never seriously expected to have a Republican governor. Cardenas simply wanted Bush to be given the same number of appointments as Jennings and Thrasher.

A rules change requires the approval of two-thirds of the executive committee. When it became apparent to Cardenas that he could not get anywhere near that kind of support, he just dropped the proposal.

Cardenas chalked this up to the usual intraparty politics. Executive committees loathe change, and this would erode their power.

``To imply that there's a problem here would be to distort the situation,'' Cardenas said. ``These committee members love Jeb.''

That's true. But executive committee members want the governor to know what it feels like to be the teenage kid who's left home alone on prom night.